In 2019 I  completed 2 years of research and consultancy  for Creative Leicestershire evaluating and developing plans for Made in Leicestershire, a directory and programme for artists and makers. I have also developed and run a Peer Mentoring professional development programme for both start ups and established makers in Leicestershire. This project was jointly funded by Creative Leicestershire & partners, ERDF and Arts Council England.

My role was to research and evaluate current provision of the artist directory created by Creative Leicestershire in 2008 against other artist directories and organisations, consult artists on development and marketing needs, run focus groups on networks and connections within the county and provide a series of recommendations to Creative Leicestershire and partners to move forwards.

Additional funding allowed me to establish and run a series of peer mentoring groups, provide training and bursaries for members to develop their careers and networks. I also interviewed artists for webinars for CL’s WebinArt professional development programme which can be seen here and here.

The project publication is downloadable here:  Made in Leicestershire Booklet.

The final report is available here. There are also a number of research documents which I created during the project which are on the Creative Leicestershire website.

The first report I created in 2017 was created following an extensive artist survey, network meetings and focus groups. This covers employment, portfolio careers, income and funding, studio space, professional development, networks and memberships. It also includes artist case studies.  Download the report. here.

Photos of me by Rosie Reed Gold for Creative Leicestershire